Much Ado About Nothing – “Ice Cream Engineering”
I was painfully struggling to impersonate a human ball of sweat on the verge of fiery combustion at the gym recently while a friend calmly trotted along on the treadmill next to me. After several minutes, I regained consciousness long enough to realize she was having a lengthy conversation with me. About ice cream. Dairy Queen cones, to be exact. Seriously. While I’m silently paying the penalties of even thinking about foods with caloric density greater than iceberg lettuce, she’s extolling the magnificence of Dairy Queen ice cream cones.
Since finding new friends who are more willing to share my suffering would have to wait until a time after I’d showered, I decided to at least try to be interested. I haven’t actually been to Dairy Queen since about 1999 when I had an unexpected layover of several hours in Eden, Texas to get a flat tire repaired. I’m estimating that nearly half the 2800 population of Eden, Texas was at Dairy Queen that particular day. Since the other half of the population are inmates incarcerated at the Eden Detention Center, that’s an impressive turnout. Unfortunately, the ice cream machine at the Eden Dairy Queen was broken.
Fast forward two decades and my local Dairy Queen is pumping out ice cream cones that, according to my so-called friend, are an architectural feat of wonder created by food service workers with superhuman skills! A mixture of magic, engineering and frozen yumminess that is nearly inconceivable on a cake cone.
She swears her cone was expertly swirled and piled to a height measuring greater than her elbow to fingertip. Then to add an element of blessed miraculousness to it, she had it encased in an envelope of whisper-thin chocolate. She truly had no explanation for this creation. Which, for no other reason than utter respect, she then ate in its entirety. Because of course she did.
Meanwhile, I’ve pulled the emergency stop chord on my treadmill and am standing there dripping and staring with my mouth open in sheer amazement. I took a few polite moments to casually chit-chat a parting then bolted for my car. Unsure whether this woman was spouting incantations of sugared evil or preaching the actual truth, I’ve decided to instigate a thorough personal investigation. If you need me, you know where to find me.
